No Excuse
by telosphilos
Summary: Kakashi gets reamed over his writing, but that's not the real problem. Originally written for Genjutsu fest. Paired compliment to Excuses Solve...


title: No Excuse  
author: telopshilos  
code name: Jaguar, Team Canon  
fandom: Naruto, Kakairu sub-fandom  
rating: general audiences  
characters/pairings: Umino Iruka, Hatake Kakashi pre-relationship  
disclaimer: all copyrighted characters and their canons belong to Kishimoto. No harm is intended, just fun.  
summary: Kakashi gets reamed over his writing, but that's not the real problem.  
warnings: none  
Author's Note: Do recall there are no computers in the Naruto Universe. I'm basing some of the work off of watching my mother working on her Masters' in Engineering and toward her PhD which we got transfered before she could complete way back before Windows 3.11 was even invented.  
word count: 8077 exactly  
prompt: Excuses

Kakashi was doing his best not to fume as he hopped down off the roof of the bar where he and Asuma had agreed, time permitting, to have their post-mission drink. Asuma was already there, sitting round the back on the covered patio, at a table that boasted two extra and empty chairs. The second chair would be for Kurenai, Kakashi thought. Asuma may want to keep their relationship quiet but it was pretty obvious to everyone else, especially when he did things like saving her a seat. Hopefully twitting them about it would soothe his irritation.

Thankfully, Asuma had picked up on his mood since he pushed some edamame over and ordered a beer for him. Kakashi could only be glad he wasn't the sort to press him into talking about it. He knew Asuma would wait him out or else set Kurenai on him, but some peace and a beer would go a ways to evening out his temper. Every once in a good while something like this would happen to make him grateful for company that'd known him for so long.

Kurenai arrived back at the table, following behind their waitress who had his frozen mug and a sealed bottle of good dark beer. She waited for the waitress to be out of earshot before asking Kakashi, "So what happened? You look like someone ruined your day."

"One of the chuunin in the mission room threw a fit at me," Kakashi answered after a beat. As much as he wanted to obfuscate and pretend it hadn't happened, he knew it would be all over the gossip network soon. "Let me have my beer and decide if I want to have him written up for it, alright?"

Asuma and Kurenai looked at each other, a little stunned by the easy admission. "He's faking being fine with it until he really is," Asuma murmured quietly to Kurenai, but not quietly enough that Kakashi couldn't hear him.

"More or less," Kakashi agreed affably between bites of salty soy beans. "Fake it 'till you make it actually works sometimes." He made sure his visible eye crinkled up the way people always interpreted as a smile. Sometimes he did have a shit eating grin going under his mask when he did that, sometimes he just faked it. The beer, company, and change of scenery was helping to lower his ire at the desk nin.

"Well then, keep faking it," Kurenai agreed while rolling her eyes. "Who was it and what were they on about this time?" Her burgundy gaze was fairly mild and somewhat mirthful. It was interesting to note that his irritated moods amused them. His genin team had so ruined his reputation for being a fierce and lethal shinobi. Between the kids and that chuunin, people had a lot less trepidation where he was concerned. Of course, it didn't help that many of his peers and closer comrades had good memories of him as a brat, and he could still sometimes be that brat.

Of course, it would be that self-same chuunin who challenged his authority over the chuunin exams causing him problems again. Really, they got along great on missions and seemed to rub along well enough most of the time in social situations. On missions they were both very professional. Socially, Iruka deferred to him, but felt rather free to disagree on a wide variety of subjects without, as far as Kakashi had sensed, any sort of animosity building between them.

The waitress returned with their food giving Kakashi some time to think through just what was worth saying and what to leave out. "Umino Iruka took exception to my mission report. Really, I have no idea why." He ate a little and washed it down with a good swing of the dark heady beer. "At least part of it has to do with my penmanship not being up to their standards. I understood that part at least."

"Oh, that," Asuma stated very flatly.

Kurenai blinked. "Fill me in, I'm missing something here." Kakashi was glad he wasn't the only one. Really, the entire thing had made very little sense to him. His report was full and complete. While people did complain about his poor handwriting from time to time, this incident still seemed to have no real justification. He was starting to think that perhaps something else was going on beyond a desk nin having a bad day and taking it out on him.

Asuma sighed, took a swing of his beer, and said, "There is a perfectly bureaucratic mess going on down at Intel. The attrition rates pulled some asses out of the desks and back into the field. Not all of them were ready enough for it. They took a few casualties they couldn't afford. Fortunately, most of them aren't dead. The hospital stays are nothing to sneeze at, but it doesn't help the problem that pulled them out of the skiff* in the first place."

He took a drink and let that sink in for a moment before continuing, "They dragged me in to give some opinions on other things, but I caught the skuttlebutt about some sort of study some jackass put through on how fast information was flowing in and out of the department. The higher ups really weren't happy with the results so the pressure is on to make up for lost time any way they can."

Kurenai rolled her eyes and quietly swore under her breath before commenting, "So they're in cover your ass mode rather than actually trying to fix the problems?"

"Well, sort of. They're playing the blame game and not wanting to own up to the fact they just plain aren't as good without their key people," Asuma admitted, "Although, it has been noticed."

While interesting, Kakashi figured Asuma just needed to get to the point because he certainly hadn't yet and he was nearly done with his first beer. "What has that got to do with penmanship or the mission room?"

"I'm getting there," Asuma groused, "that absurd study was on how long it takes for the analysts to process the information in the mission reports. Somehow that got translated into," he slipped into a mocking falsetto, "'These pages are impossible to read, we can't possibly go any faster!'" before returning to his normal tones, "The upshot of which is they refused to take anything from the mission desks that they considered either incomplete or impossible to read."

"You're kidding." Kakashi gave him a very flat stare.

"I wish," Asuma agreed.

"So, it isn't the mission desk that is causing the problems so much as the analysts over at intel?" Kurenai inquired incredulously, clearly just looking for confirmation.

"As far as I can tell, yes." Asuma nodded. "I caught wind of some sort of uproar when they handed down their demands to the desk staff in the mission room. It got just shy of people throwing weapons and jutsu around from the sounds of it."

Kakashi could barely believe it. It was stupid enough that he didn't doubt Asuma was telling the truth. He just couldn't quite see how Intel was being allowed to get away with it. Yes, they needed good intelligence people out there, but they also needed to be able to use what they got. Pulling this bullshit was just stupid.

As they were leaving, just a few steps from the beer garden, Iruka turned up abruptly from the roofs and bowed politely to them. "May I have a word Kakashi-san?" he asked calmly, "I believe I owe you an apology."

Kurenai gave a quiet sniff. "From the sounds of it, you certainly do." She crossed her arms and frowned at him. Iruka nodded in agreement with a sigh. Kakashi took a moment to think it over before deciding that it would be best to let the chuunin get on with it. He'd hear out whatever excuse the man had and deal with it later so that he could at least go home sooner.

"I'm sorry," he began, "You'd obviously only recently gotten in from a mission and just wanted to go home and get cleaned up. You didn't deserve to be the focus of my ire at all. While I could give you an explanation, it doesn't really matter. It was wrong and I should not have done it. If you want to write me up for it, I'll countersign it." Iruka shrugged as he offered that.

Kakashi just stared at him. Was the man serious? No excuses, no nothing, he was just apologizing. This just got interesting. He was tempted to take Iruka up on the offer, but he needed more information first. Asuma and Kurenai seemed to be looking at each other out of the sides of their eyes and they all waited for Kakashi's response.

After a moment, Kakashi broke the tableau with a nod. "I see," he said, "I would like that explanation. I do not like being blindsided like that."

Iruka nodded and answered with tired good humor, "Short answer is I'm overworked, exhausted, and highly frustrated. It was the proverbial straw, not your report at all. I'm afraid the long answer sounds a hell of a lot like a pity party to me."

"Is that so?" Kurenai asked, eyebrow cocked up in a curious expression, "How bad of a pity party?" Since Kurenai had worked at the academy before making jounin the implication that Iruka didn't put up with whining was pretty clear.

"Bad enough," Iruka replied. "Crap is flowing down hill on the support staff side and is about to really hit the fan if we can't fix a few lovely problems."

"I've been telling them some of it," Asuma finally joined in, "Let's get out of the road and you can fill us in on on the rest."

Kakashi took the time to consider Iruka's apology, the simple fact that it was sincere with no attempts to justify anything really did count for a lot. Most people would drone on and on trying to pretend it wasn't so bad or that they weren't really wrong in the first place. The hypocrisy tended to annoy him.

Iruka, on the other hand, seemed to actually mean it. The prissy desk nin really would countersign a reprimand admitting culpability in a disorderly conduct incident. Kakashi had dealt with enough weasels that it was really rather nice, refreshing even. It was almost too bad he couldn't actually do it just to see what would happen. Unfortunately, he suspected the fallout would be way out of proportion to the incident and all of the teacher's current and former students would be a problem.

Iruka followed them down the road to one of the smaller training grounds nearby. Kakashi chose one that the academy often used to be more relaxing for the chuunin. He figured they'd get more out of the man if he was in a more familiar setting.

Kakashi sat down on one of the small roofs with his back to the water tower. He watched the younger man get out his canteen and take several long pulls on it. He noted that Iruka was coated in sweat from his run and also had dirt from several areas of the village. The marks on his shoulders and pants gave a visible map of where the desk nin had brushed up or impacted against things. His eyes were bright and clear, but some dark deep bruising was starting to really show on the skin below that had been there before, but not so obviously.

Asuma lit a fresh cigarette where he sat at the edge of the little building. "I told them about the handwriting study," he prodded to start the teacher off.

Iruka grimaced. "That thing could not have come at a worse time." The teacher looked irritated and very displeased. "The worst part about it is that it's right. One of the many things to make my life difficult was being pulled in for a 'peer review' to make sure they had done the study right. Of course, it doesn't help that I'd suggested they check about a year or so ago and they had to put my name down for the suggestion in the acknowledgements section."

"Really?" Asuma inquired with a tinge of disbelief. Kakashi had no idea what the teacher would have to do with a peer review for Intel. Chalk it up to yet another oddity of the chuunin's place in Konoha. After all, how many other chuunin had so many ties to so many parts of their society.

Kakashi had ordered the man around as his subordinate on missions, so he knew that Iruka was field active when he could be spared. He worked at the academy and knew all the families and clans with a good working sense of what they could do and extended that on to his work at the mission desk. From the desk, Kakashi had seen the man interact with shinobi at all levels on polite, if not friendly terms.

"Really," Iruka agreed. "It's something we picked up on at the mission desk years ago, but have never figured out how to fix. I made a joke about it when submitting the paperwork for my PhD classes about possible topics to write my thesis on. Unfortunately, being able to prove we were right about it does nothing to fix the underlying problem. Their refusal to accept messy reports now doesn't address the real problem, just pushes it off onto us and the people writing the original reports. And people wonder why I don't get along with Hiroshi-san."

"I take it Hiroshi-san is behind the policy change?" Kurenai asked.

"Yeah, he's basically competent as an analyst, but he doesn't see the big picture yet. He doesn't quite get how things interact on a bureaucratic level or rather he thinks he has all the variables pinned down and almost always misses a few of the more dependent factors." Iruka elaborated on the flaws of Hiroshi-san. "He's overreaching again and no one is currently in a position to smack him down and show him where he's missing things. Yes, the penmanship on the reports is a problem and does lead to some lag in the system, but …." Iruka was the very picture of exasperation. Kakashi had had subordinates like that before. Keeping them from wandering off into the weeds with their ideas could be difficult. Iruka wasn't Hiroshi's superior, so it was in some ways worse.

"I don't understand." Asuma looked at the younger nin in confusion. "PhD? And how does the penmanship make for problems?"

"PhD is a doctorate in a subject. It's mostly self directed research that advances the knowledge base in a particular subject in some way. I only just finished a Masters' degree  
so I'm just getting started on really getting into my research." Iruka explained off-handedly, "Think of it as the civilian version of an elite jounin."

"Really?" asked Kurenai as they all were rather surprised by the idea that any shinobi would seek out that kind of education in the civilian world.

"Aa, it's a political maneuver to have a few shinobi educated with high civilian degrees. It shuts down certain arguments before they get started, Yondaime-sama set it up," Kakashi explained, "There were a few attempts to undermine him by portraying all shinobi as uneducated thugs. Most of the people who went for the program went in under math or engineering. I think I remember a couple in military history, but I didn't know anyone went for education." He really was surprised. It was an almost unheard of program for field shinobi, and even for support shinobi it was rather rare. Although, the cryptography department was starting to require a certain amount of education mathematics.

His sensei had asked him to consider it, and he did, but only in passing. It was pretty clear they needed him working missions, not sitting in classrooms even then. Once his sensei had passed on, so had the opportunity. It would have been nice to have gone for that engineering degree, but that was water under the bridge now.

"Actually, I'm a certified teacher, not someone with a degree in education." Iruka corrected their assumption. It was a fairly common one from the way the chuunin came out with that.

"What's the difference?" Asuma asked. Kakashi figured Asuma really hadn't delved into this area of shinobi support staff yet.

"My bachelors is in logistics with a minor in accounting and another in statistics. I got to be a teacher because we needed people to teach and Sandaime talked me into it. You take an extra exam for a teaching certification. I was there anyway and it makes us look better to have a certain number of officially certified teachers on staff," the chuunin explained. A degree in logistics made a lot more sense than one in education. While Kakashi could see uses for education degrees in their support system, he couldn't quite picture it happening at the time Iruka would have been doing it. "Since I did well in my psychology courses as well, he wanted me to do some studies on what methods worked best for teaching the students. My masters is technically in educational psychology which isn't quite the same thing as straight education."

Asuma nodded, "I guess that makes sense. I do see you in Intel often enough and Shikamaru has been griping a bit more than usual since he was assigned to assist at the academy."

Kurenai rolled her eyes and Iruka grinned at him. "Back to the penmanship problem," Iruka began, dismissing his education level as irrelevant, "The problem is legibility. If it can't be easily read, it can't be easily processed. The fact is that the staff can't read stuff that is not really really clear and clean, so part of this is their fault for not bothering to get better at reading it. The other part is on the side of the people turning mission reports in. The style sheets do need updating, but a lot of people aren't even trying most of the time."

"And that's what lead to your little meltdown today." Kakashi looked at him, it wasn't so much a question as a statement.

"Part of it, yes." Iruka agreed with a blush. It was adorable and still quite visible in the low light. The teacher's eyes were dilated so wide he looked like one of his younger students, over tired and not ready to call it quits yet. "The rest is that I have exams to take at the university in the capital in two weeks that I have to study for, plus I need to get enough written up on the research, and past Intel to go out to the university without being stolen." The chuunin gave a rather black look at the thought of them stealing his work.

"Would they really steal your work?" Kurenai asked. Kakashi wondered if she'd never seen it happen before. He'd helped to prove a case of it once a long time ago as an ANBU when the mission was an internal affairs investigation.

"Yeah," Asuma answered, "they would if it was good enough and they thought they could get away with it. There are some empire builders and glory hounds over there." Now that made Kakashi give his nicotine addicted friend a hard look. He'd have to get the full story there later.

"Pretty much," Iruka agreed sourly and continued, "The kids have their exams coming up in a month too. And, I keep being scheduled for way too many hours at the mission desk, so I half wonder if it isn't an attempt at sabotaging me or something. I'm not getting any real down time and it's to the point where it is cutting into my sleep and mandatory training hours."

The man did look worn out and worn down. Kakashi was inclined to forgive him, but the accusation of sabotage whether serious or not wasn't something that sat right with him. "Just how many hours are you working?"

His gut said something was wrong here. Seriously wrong. He'd worked with Iruka enough on missions and outside of them to have picked up on yet another of the chuunin's oddities. The man would make off the cuff comments and turn out to be dead on later. It was bizarre how that had never been honed into an actual skill. That instinct that the chuunin had was frighteningly useful and yet it was up to the people around him to listen and follow up on it.

"Teaching is supposed to be a 40 hour a week job. It never actually works out to be that way because of all the hours planning and grading, but that's what it is officially supposed to be. My school work is also officially supposed to be 40 hours a week, although in practice it is more typical for these things to be worked at a slower pace because of the required class load. I'm still making up for having to cut back so much during the invasion reconstruction. The mission desk is only supposed to be for 10 to 15 hours a week during the after school rushes or on the weekends, but it's been pushing past 30 hours lately despite my complaints."

"So you basically have three full time jobs?" Kakashi couldn't quite help sounding somewhat incredulous. He knew better than to think Iruka was lying, but it was a gross violation of the regs. There simply weren't enough hours in the day for that kind of workload to be possible to complete. Kurenai and Asuma looked equally stunned and questioning.

"I've got some overlap at the mission desk as you saw a couple weeks ago," Iruka affirmed, referring to when Kakashi had seen him half buried in files and ledgers. "I'll have a week in the capital to deal with everything and then things should get easier. Speaking of making things easier," he changed the subject, "Izumo started laying out a form to cut down on the actual amount of writing needed and asked everyone at the mission desk to fool around with it until we could get something workable. The objective is to get the most information with the least amount of writing."

They let him change the subject because it was obvious he didn't really want to go on any further about his workload. "Is there a pattern to where the most problems show up?" Kurenai inquired suspiciously, "You are putting too much thought into the handwritten portions for there not to be a good reason for it."

Iruka got up and started to pace. "This is part of my research so please don't spread it around. It's pretty consistent that the older shinobi who graduated during wars have considerably more trouble with handwriting than the ones who didn't. What it looks like to me, as a teacher, is that basic things like stroke order and the radicals weren't really drilled the way they need to be back when you were at the academy, Kakashi-san. Genma and Raidou graduated at the same time and they have similar errors cropping up, just less frequently."

"And yet I can do fuuinjutsu," Kakashi put out there, feeling rather defensive. He really didn't like the implication there.

"Of course you can," agreed Iruka looking surprised, "You are tapping a different region of the brain for that. It has more to do with art and creativity than language skills. It's pretty typical for people to be able to do calligraphy, but have terrible handwriting otherwise." Kakashi watched him pause and look him back in the eye. "What I'm saying is the fault isn't likely to be yours, not really. The fault goes to the system that was in place at the time. When we have a war, we focus on getting bodies out on the field. Things like throwing kunai get a lot more emphasis than how to write an after action report."

"Then why do Gai and I write so much better than he does?" prodded Asuma curiously.

"Several reasons, one is you both spent significantly longer at the academy. Four years is a long time," the teacher pointed out. "A second reason is that you both had a lot of lower level missions where you wrote the reports to practice as well as extra written work which happened because your jounin-sensei emphasized it. Having met Kakashi's team, I really wouldn't be shocked if Kakashi had also wormed his way out of writing the team's reports so he didn't get that extra practice."

Kakashi would never admit that Iruka's guess was accurate. Sure, Obito had complained, but even at his worst he was better at the reports than Kakashi was. Kakashi had written the reports for several years prior to Obito joining the team, unless his sensei had things to include that Kakashi wasn't supposed to be involved in, which was often, so his report writing before having teammates had been sporadic at best.

"Another reason is that Kakashi was in the field at a much younger developmental age than is possible to really master kanji, then add in the time he spent in ANBU where the reports are typically oral, which I can't believe is a known, but still..." Kakashi had to wonder who had blabbed about the oral reports or if the teacher had just reasoned it out. The idea was to avoid a paper trail, not that one could ever be fully avoided. "Kanji has to be practiced for skills to be maintained. Anything that has to be maintained can be lost," Iruka elucidated, defending Kakashi from the implied insult. "It's really a natural consequence of how things have gone for him since early childhood."

The conversation continued from there for a good while. Kakashi found that Iruka put a lot of thought into the dynamics that formed their shinobi. The long term goal of the teacher's work was for greater numbers of those that formed the ranks to survive long enough to have children of their own, naturally depleting the attrition that occurs in their line of work and preserving more family lines.

Between the four of them they had bounced around the notions of how to put together a finishing school or a continuing education program for people to catch up on skills they had missed or brush up on things that they simply hadn't needed to use in a long time and weren't so sure about any more. Kakashi was fairly sure Iruka's research would prove the need for a program of some sort to further educate their forces outside of the teacher-student apprentice model they mostly conformed to now.

Being good shinobi, the jounin made a point of verifying everything Iruka had told them about his difficulties with Intel. The comment about possibly being sabotaged had a ring of truth to it. The work load he was under and his obvious need to vent to someone who was uninvolved was troubling. The question was if it was intentional sabotage or accidental.

The three of them signed in at Intel at just past two in the morning a few days later, after Iruka -sensei had seemingly disappeared from the village. It was a well guarded skiff with sealed doors and layers upon layers of security. Fortunately, they did all have the clearances necessary to get to the places they needed without resorting to a 'steal the scroll' test of security. They probably could do it if they had to, but having a record of checking things out was a strategic advantage if they did find anything deliberate.

They gathered up the information about the penmanship study first. The report was damning. Umino had littered it with comments about his observations and possible ways to improve the methodology in future studies to make it more unassailable but had not contested a single result as erroneous. Filed with it was a protest from Umino stating specifically what the outcome would be of trying to force better penmanship on the field shinobi without carefully planned out revision and alternatives for how the mission reports were written and processed. From the looks of it, the man was right on all counts. The fallout was happening exactly as he had predicted.

Next, they went to review the mission desk timesheets, Kurenai was taking very careful forensic notes on who had accessed them both on and off the record. Umino hadn't been kidding, his hours logged were very excessive for a part time job for the last month and a half. No one was accessing them that was not supposed to be, but Hiroshi-san, whom Iruka-sensei had complained about, had done so most often. Really, that wasn't unexpected, Hiroshi was in charge of scheduling for the mission desks.

All roads lead to Hiroshi, but nothing said he was intentionally trying to screw over Umino. Kakashi wasn't the only one concerned. If it was unintentional, that meant their intel personnel were growing slovenly. If it was intentional, it was well done.

Hiroshi's desk was the next place to investigate. They hit paydirt. As expected it was modestly booby trapped, but nothing they couldn't take apart easily. The chuunin level traps weren't bad, just not up to their caliber of opposition, particularly working together. Inside the desk, in a false drawer, they found a lot of written complaints about the hours Iruka was working. Iruka wasn't even the only one complaining. Most of the chuunin's friends were as well. Their loyalty to him drove them to offer to take more hours to prevent him from burning out completely.

It was coming together. Iruka and the chuunin at the desk were kicking their complaints up the chain of command, as made clear by the addresses on the memos and then the problem was being delegated back down. That is if they were making it up to the addressee at all as they look to have been interoffice mailed which made them easy to steal.

Aside from that discovery, the man had made all kinds of notes about Iruka's research. He'd been part of the board reviewing what would be permitted to leave the village. Hiroshi had seen exactly what Iruka was working on. From the notes it was very clear that he intended to usurp it. In fact, it looked like he intended for Iruka-sensei, teacher extraordinaire, to be killed on a mission so that he could just come in and take over as he was familiar with it. Succeeding at completing Iruka's work would likely push Hiroshi from upper level chuunin to special jounin.

In a small storage scroll, they found a mortar and pestle and an assortment of stimulants. There was an extraordinary variety of aphrodisiacs, uppers, downers, and anabolic steroids, that was what they recognized. They'd need a medic nin to identify the rest of it. With it was a log of days and dosages. No identifying of the target, just how much and when with notes of commentary about the result.

An extremely high dosage was listed on the same day as Iruka's meltdown in the mission room. The notes indicated it was an excellent response and that the coffee cup would need cleaning to cover his tracks. Going back in time they found that Hiroshi had discovered Iruka dosed his coffee regularly to keep up his poison tolerances which would cover most of the dosings he intended.

Kurenai was disturbed. Asuma was rather stunned at the dosages of whatever he'd figured out. "He should have dropped dead weeks ago." Asuma signed at his partners in the silent office.

Kakashi nodded and replied the same way, "His heart should have exploded and he should be having out and out 'roid rages. Hiroshi-san made a mistake, Iruka's built up tolerances instead. It's well past toxic levels so we are seeing symptoms. Iruka has admirable self control to have kept us from seeing more."

"People are always underestimating him," Kurenai agreed, "and he likes it that way. He says it makes his job much easier."

A reference to a study on sleep deprivation had the trio looking for it in the archives. They didn't bother to even try to read it, just took forensic records of who had accessed it last. It was such an old study that no one had bothered with it in a long while. As they expected, the last person to check it out was Hiroshi-san.

They had enough. The report they were preparing would be sufficient to get a fuller investigation if there needed to be one. Tsunade would not be amused. The irony that they were going to nail that clever bastard, Hiroshi-san, based on his paper trail was not lost on any of them.

The hokage's office was full of paperwork. Her desk had stacks of it in an inbox, in an outbox, and more besides. The hokage herself was perusing yet another file as they, Kakashi and Asuma, were sent in. Aside from seeing Tsunade look a bit bored with it all, it looked very normal. Hopefully, the fuss they were going to kick up wouldn't be too damaging to anyone's day.

Kakashi slouched where he stood and waited to be acknowledged. In his right hand, he held a manilla folder containing just a few sheets of paper. Asuma had a similar one in his left. Kakashi had to wonder just why they were being kept waiting. They knew their place. It wasn't like they needed a reminder like this one. What could they have done to displease her, this time?

After a suitable time, or at least what their commander and chief considered to be sufficient for her purposes, Tsunade set down the file and looked over the desk at them. "Well, let's get this over with."

Asuma nodded and spoke first. "We think one of the chuunin, Iruka-sensei, is working himself into an early grave. I'm sure you were told about the incident in the mission room." He purposefully waved off the acerbic meltdown the man had let loose on Kakashi.

"Yes, I was." Tsunade agreed. Her expression hadn't changed, but a microexpression had betrayed her curiosity however briefly it flit across her face. It seemed they were surprising her. "I expect one of those folders is the official reprimand you want me to sign off on?"

"Actually no," Kakashi responded, "I admit that I thought about it, but he did give me one of the most sincere public apologies I've ever heard and we all discussed the incident and what caused it."

Asuma nodded in agreement. "Best damn apology I've ever heard." He brought up his manilla folder and opened it. "When we spoke, he mentioned being overworked and exhausted. He looks the part too, or did when last I saw him. So we decided to check over what he told us to see if it was accurate."

"Trust but verify," Tsunade murmured into her hands before reaching for the file Asuma was looking at. Her expression hadn't changed yet, but they clearly had her undivided attention.

"Exactly," Kakashi agreed. "What we found doesn't look good. It looks like someone is deliberately trying to run the man into the ground, and is well on their way to succeeding."

"Kakashi is understating it." Asuma grimaced. "We found evidence of attempted murder."

Tsunade's eyes widened. She started looking around her desk for something. "Where is that report?" she mumbled to herself. She rifled through her papers until she found what she was looking for. Opening up the file, she read through it. Whatever it was, it wasn't good as her jaw had dropped open involuntarily. Gathering herself, she ordered them to continue.

"Hiroshi-san, the chuunin in charge of scheduling for the mission desk, wants to take over Iruka's research. Instead of stealing it, the intent is to have Iruka-san suffering so badly from sleep deprivation and drugs that he makes a fatal mistake on a mission, then Hiroshi can swoop in and complete it."

"Drugs." Tsunade wasn't questioning them. She was looking at the report in her hands.

"Hai, enough should be in his system that withdrawal while he's on his mission right now may be a serious problem," Asuma said very flatly. "In fact, if we are right, Iruka should have dropped dead two weeks ago already just from the drugs."

"Let me see exactly what you have," Tsunade ordered seriously. She cleared off most of her desk for them to lay it all out. Asuma handed over a report Kurenai had written stating exactly what they had done and what they had found. Kakashi contributed the evidence itself, the scroll with the drugs and their forensic notes.

Laid all out, it was painful to see. Hiroshi-san had been devilishly clever. Had the chuunin not targeted one of their own shinobi, this plot would have been enough to push him up for promotion. Just a bit more polish to eliminate the paper trail, or at least hide it better and he would be jounin material. He would never get that promotion now, a dishonorable discharge and a mindwipe were in his future. What a waste, such a devious mind and too few scruples not to target their own.

It would be another mission report later before Kakashi would be back to discuss the problems he was having with the new report standards. He'd meant to go over it at this meeting, but it really wasn't near as important.

The mission room looked much different when Kakashi returned a few days after Iruka-sensei had made it back from the capital. Tsunade was supervising a reorganisation of half the room near the far side doors. Iwashi was hanging up very large wall scrolls behind three new kotatsu with heaters and everything. Iruka was setting some zabuton at each. Kotetsu and Izumo were manning the desks on the other end of the room, but otherwise the room was empty.

"Hey! Kakashi-san!" Kotetsu cheerfully called from across the room. "Got a good excuse for us?" Kakashi blinked before recalling that Asuma had mentioned something about an excuses contest a couple weeks past.

Kakashi gave a lazy shrug as he slouched toward them. "A persnickety porpoise prepared with a pernicious sense of penmanship prolonged the preparation of the report," he alliterated for maximum humor value. He actually did have a fairly clean copy. It was correct in format and contained everything it was supposed to, but the penmanship still was far from the standard Intel wanted it to be. He'd hoped that Tsunade had slapped them down on the subject some.

Iruka chuckled and dryly claimed, "I'm not that bad. It's not my fault my pre-genin have better penmanship than you do, but if you wait a few once they take your report I have a couple things you can try." The man looked pale and ill. A close look revealed an IV line hidden under his uniform to one of his legs with a couple pouches resting beneath the front of his vest. Kakashi was not that surprised that the teacher had to be weaned off the drugs, but he was surprised to see him at the mission room instead of in the hospital.

"Sure," he agreed and handed over the report. Izumo reviewed it, nodding along as he saw that everything was correct. When he looked up he said, "As far as I can tell your report is good, it's just not up to the penmanship standard." The chuunin called over Kakashi's shoulder, "Hokage-sama, could you do an override for this? I don't want to rewrite it."

Tsunade walked over and took the report. Kakashi felt a touch sheepish under her cool gaze. "Looks like all of you were right. Kakashi-kun, your report is perfectly written, right format, right information, good use of appropriate details, just almost illegible handwriting."

Kakashi nodded coolly hiding his embarrassment under a facade of lazy boredom. "They can read it, you can, for all the complaints I get about it, most people can parse out what I wrote."

"He has a point, you know," Iwashi put his support in. The rest of the desk nin obviously agreed.

"He does," Iruka-sensei agreed, "but not all of them can and there are certain details that can't be puzzled out from context clues. Tsuchi and shi look alike, and are almost impossible to tell apart when he writes them, but there is a huge difference between talking about earth and scholars or warriors. Context works for telling which one he means." The teacher handed Iwashi some stacks of papers to go in the large letter boxes. "The same goes for tsuna and ami, a rope is not a net nor the other way around, except context is harder. The less he has to physically write out, the less likely someone will get confused."

"Take a look at the new forms and tell me what you think, Kakashi-kun." Tsunade had Iwashi hand over a small stack of each of the different forms. What Kakashi saw when he looked at them was that nearly everything was conveyed via check box or some other non-written form of indication. The page made the report look a lot longer than the old style sheets, but had almost no actual writing required until the details page at the end. Different forms were available to relate encounters with foreign or unidentified ninja that didn't have to be included. It was really a very flexible system designed to give the analysts what they were looking for while streamlining the organization of that information.

"This looks very good," Kakashi said looking up at Tsunade. "I think this will address the problem even if it won't fully fix it. Quite a few details will still have to be written, and probably some of the contextual clues will wind up stripped out, but the basics are all here."

Tsunade nodded. "Iruka-sensei has some ideas about how to deal with that."

"The sitting area over here is for rewrites," the teacher said, indicating the new tables full of forms, writing implements, and coasters? Yes, Kakashi had seen coasters on the kotatsu for drinks. "There's some vending machines down the hall, plus tea and coffee are available too. There is no reason not to have something while working on the forms."

"So why do it here? Why not send people off?" Kakashi asked consideringly. He had an idea, but it would be better to just hear them out. He'd certainly learned his lesson after that apology and the discussion they'd had afterwards. Assuming would just cause problems, again.

"We're eliminating the most common, sincere, excuses. This way we can actually help," Iruka smiled at him, "Oh don't give me that look, if we let them run off we waste everyone's time and energy. Better we help everyone through it than repetitively refuse reports. Besides, look closer at what we're putting together."

Kakashi blinked at him, not that they could see it with his eye covered, but went to go look closer at the kotatsu. One of the little shelves for forms had laminated sheets that he hadn't seen yet. Pulling them out, he found several reference pages. One had an explanation of how the mission reports were used by the intelligence analysts and cycled back as data for the actual missions themselves. Another set of pages had several basic maps of the different elemental countries. A different set had a reference table showing several words written in three different alphabets. And last was a sheet explaining how to do a copying jutsu for copying pages without altering their contents with clear instructions for how to copy off the reference sheet and on to the mission forms.

The last sheet struck Kakashi as being rather pointed at him. Holding it up and reading it carefully, committing it to memory, he asked, "I take it this is the solution you were referring to Iruka-sensei?"

The teacher looked at it, and shook his head, "No, that would be far too tedious. With enough practice I'm sure you could be able to do the forms in your sleep using the copying jutsu, but I think your chakra control is good enough to use this instead." He pulled out a small scroll from his vest and handed it to Kakashi in trade for the pages he'd been looking at. "It's a highly modified water nin-jutsu that works with ink. If you can form a chakra scalpel you can do this one for writing. It's what I used for that big map on the wall since while I write well, I don't draw well."

The scroll contained a highly technical account of a rather tricky ink jutsu, just as Iruka had said. It would take time, but it was possible to learn it from the scroll and it would probably work. He did have the reports correct in his head, his hands just couldn't seem to ever make the words look quite right. It frustrated him immensely that he could draw and do sealing, but could barely write.

"If you have a few minutes and you aren't too tired, I can show you how it works and you can copy it with your eye," Iruka suggested as the older nin studied the scroll. Few people ever made that offer so it surprised Kakashi. "And if that won't do, I think you'll appreciate my last surprise that I brought back from the capital."

"Another surprise?" Tsunade arched an eyebrow in exasperation, "What other surprise?"

"I found a new tool at the university. I took in a lecture on dysgraphia at my advisor's recommendation and for the hopeless cases, and there are a few among the undergrads, they are requiring the use of this." Pulling out a storage scroll, he unsealed it revealing three machines that would write in hiragana. "They are calling these typewriters. Purchasing them wiped me out, so please keep them from being stolen."

Tsunade hefted one of the heavy machines as Iruka and Kakashi put the other two on the tables. Kakashi inspected it finding all 46 characters clearly printed on the keys. It was imperfect for writing everything that could possibly be said, but it would go a long way.

It was such a simple solution. He'd heard of these devices before, but never actually used one. Taking a sheet of paper, he attempted to load it in the feeder to try it out. After three failed attempts to get it just right, Iruka stepped forward and showed him how it worked and typed out a simple sentence and the name and address of the dealer.

From another pocket Iruka pulled out another storage scroll. "Depending on how much use these get we may need regular missions to go pick up new ink tapes. This scroll was as much as I could afford. It wiped out my per dium and I had to hunt for my dinner instead, but I'm estimating we have enough for a month."

"Submit a reimbursement request," Tsunade told Iruka, looking very pleased at what he had procured for them. "Also, put us in contact with the manufacturer or dealer. We could use a lot more of these."

The rest of the staff came up to inspect the machines and try them out themselves. Kotetsu took Kakashi's mission report and tried to copy it using one of the typewriters to see how it would work. Slowly, but very surely, a clean crisp copy of what Kakashi had written, with the occasional clarification from the man himself, appeared on the paper. If they hadn't been sold on the idea before, seeing the difference and the ease with which it was created would have done it.

"Oh yes, while you are here, Iruka-kun," their Hokage drawled out, Iruka turned to her expecting trouble. "You are hereby officially ordered to leave the mission room once you have reached 20 hours in a week. If anyone tries to make you stay, you are to report it to me directly." Tsunade headed for the door, "Oh and you don't have to worry about Hiroshi-san anymore."

*A skiff is essentially a big safe, one big enough that you can walk into it. It can literally be bombed and most likely will come through completely unharmed. Governments use them for storing the really classified stuff. I remember seeing one get hit by a truck and it wasn't even damaged despite the building's facade being ruined. You can see it on I Dream of Genie in the opening credits. It's the building with the missiles out front.


End file.
